


Something Else

by DiscordantWords



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bees, Colonization, Coma, Conspiracy, Dreams, Episode: s07e17 All Things, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 23:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4499421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscordantWords/pseuds/DiscordantWords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Might we then see the endless forks in the road that have shaped a life? And, seeing those choices, choose another path?"</p><p>Basically "It's a Wonderful Life" through an X Files lens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Continuing the slow migration of my work from my website onto Ao3. This story was originally written and posted back in 2011. I've made a few minor edits/adjustments, but nothing that affects plot. 
> 
> I have chosen not to use archive warnings. If you are concerned about content, please see the notes at the end for more details.

The song said that everything could change in a New York minute, but to Scully it seemed as though the past few months could be measured in scenes, not moments. 

An old man in a hospital bed, his heart shriveled by years of anger and blame, heart shriveled but not yet defeated, still beating gamely on in search of relief. 

Easy, drowsy comfort on a well-worn leather couch; half drunk cups of tea still steaming on the coffee table. Tongue tired from conversation, eyelids heavy and powerless to resist the soothing familiarity of his warm proximity.

A miniscule motion, a non-event in the grand scheme of all things. One small hand snakes out from under a blanket to gently grasp the wrist of one who moves past. The sudden shift in the room. His eyes darkening as he stared at her, both of them powerless to resist what came next.

A blur of motion in a darkened bedroom. Late night rain lashing against the windows. Faces close together, hands clasped. No words spoken, but she sees it in his eyes. It was always supposed to be this way. They were always supposed to end up here. She can see it in his eyes. 

Navigating the tricky minefield of the aftermath. Standing too close, or not close enough. Stolen kisses in motel rooms, crime scene photographs spilled across the bed. Smiles. Real, genuine smiles. 

Staring at him through candlelight across the awkward expanse of her mother's dining room table, all stilted clinking of forks and knives and lack of eye contact. The gurgle of a baby in the next room, her brother's look of relief as he pushes away from the table and dashes off, white linen napkin falling to the floor. 

Once there were ghosts on Christmas Eve, but this year they are both blissfully alive, hand-in-hand in the light snow. It is hard to see one's own mortality bearing down through the haze of cheer and colored lights. Death wears a black t-shirt and sprints down the sidewalk in heavy boots, slipping on the ice. He has a purse clasped under his arm, the broken strap flapping behind him. And she, fool that she is, dares to step in front of death, dares to stand in his way. 

Hot and cold, all at once. There is slush in her hair but snowflakes on her cheeks. His hands are on her, but she cannot feel them. She can, however, feel his gaze, those dark, sad eyes, burning into her. His face, swimming in and out of focus. His mouth moving but forming no words that she can hear. 

Scenes, not moments. And on Christmas Eve, 2000, she feels the curtain drop on her final act.

*

"...presented with arrhythmia, vertigo, and disorientation. Patient slipped in and out of consciousness during the examination. What's your diagnosis?"

The sudden silence causes Dana Scully to glance up from the newspaper she had been idly reading. "Hmm?" 

He is frustrated. "You're not paying attention." 

"I'm sorry," she says, glancing down at her hands, slender fingers wrapped around a coffee mug. 

"The diagnosis?"

She smiles faintly, "I'm not your student anymore, Daniel." 

He is standing by the counter, still wearing his tie. He does not like to loosen it, does not like to risk being caught looking anything less than professional. 

It is dark outside. The kitchen flooded with artificial light. She stands from the table, feeling a momentary surge of disassociation. 

(Scully hold on, hold on help is coming)

Her hand goes to the bridge of her nose, pinches sharply. 

"Are you all right?" Daniel is concerned. He moves towards her. 

"Yes," she says. "Just remembering a time when I worked normal hours." 

She hears the hiss of his breath, the faint tsk of disapproval. He will never understand why she chose the morgue. Why she chose death over life. 

His mouth is open but she silences him with a look. This is a conversation for another night. 

"I have to go," her voice is final.

He glances at the clock. They have been like this for years, ships passing in the night.

"Say," he intones, face thoughtful. His voice is casual, but she knows him better than that. This is calculated. He has been waiting for the right moment. 

She pauses at the sink. 

"What was the name of that guy you worked with for a little while? At the FBI?" 

"Fox Mulder," she says, the word sliding off of her tongue. She has not said his name out loud in a while. It is still familiar to her, comfortable in her mouth. 

"I thought so," he nods, and turns to leave the kitchen. 

She stands for a moment, irritated. He has guaranteed that she will be late after all. 

"Why?" she asks, following him from the kitchen to the hallway. 

"It's an unusual name. It stood out to me," he says. He has the newspaper in his hand. This is his ritual. He will sit in the wing-backed chair in the living room, reading the paper until his head droops and he finally goes upstairs to retire. 

"You saw him?" 

Daniel finally relents. "He's been admitted. Gunshot wound to the chest. Doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell as far as I'm concerned, but we stabilized him for now." 

She stands rooted to the spot for a moment, heart in her throat. She had only known him for a short time, and he had been downright certifiable, but she had liked him anyway. There was kindness, and deep, desperate sadness beneath his flippant exterior; fierce intelligence behind that mask of crazy. 

"Will you see him?" Daniel asks. His voice is mild. 

She meets his gaze, holds it steady. "I might. If I find the time." 

*

She does not go straight up to his room, but instead down to the morgue. She tells herself that she has to check in, that there are rules and procedures to be followed, but really what she feels is fear. 

Mulder, shot. 

Mulder, dying. 

Or was the present tense out of the equation by now? Would she open her first steel drawer of the night and find herself staring into his still, blue face? 

The thought chills her to the bone. 

She sits down at the small desk in the corner where she frequently fills out her paperwork, thankful for the blessed quiet of the night shift.

More than seven years have passed. 

She had taken him to lunch to break the news. 

"So this guy," he had said. "Means a lot to you, huh?"

How to quantify that. How to tell him about the way that Daniel could hold an entire audience captive as he recited clinical details. How he could make lectures on pulmonary embolisms and brain death sound like poetry. How he had looked out over all of those bright eyed students and seen only her. 

"I walked away from a career in medicine because of him," she said. _Ran_ away, was more like it, she had thought. Ran away from the hugeness of it all, from the crashing realization that she was carrying on with a married man, a man with a daughter more than old enough to know what was going on. A daughter almost old enough to be her peer.

Mulder let breath hiss through his teeth, and only for a second she saw that she has hurt him, and then his face shifted, the mask rearranged, and he was stony once more. He cracked a smile, but it was false. "And here I thought it was because you decided you'd rather keep your liver." 

She did not tell him that the sight of Tooms, the slick yellow horror of him bursting into her bathroom, has awakened an intellectual curiosity, a thirst she feared she may never slake. She had had no time to process it. Daniel appeared on her doorstep the very next morning, his lined face heavy with the prospect of rejection. 

"It's taken me two years to work up the courage," he'd said, and he opened his hands to show her that his ring was gone. Her bathroom was trashed, littered with broken glass and smears of yellow viscera, and he took it all in silently.

"This isn't the life for you, Dana," he said. "All this danger, this... vileness. You were meant to be a healer, not a destroyer." And when he opened his arms, she went willingly.

She said none of this to Mulder, instead offered weak platitudes about how she has enjoyed working with him, and wishes him luck. She offered to pick up the check but he was already standing up, already tossing some crumpled bills on the table. 

"Enjoy your life," he said, and then he was gone, his tall, narrow frame winding away from her. 

She mailed him a Christmas card that first year, a stupidly cheerful smiling reindeer with an equally cheerful message inside. She did not expect to get a response, and was not surprised. _It's all right,_ she'd told herself. _I owed him nothing._

She shakes her head, clearing her thoughts. Regardless of how her tenure at the FBI had ended, regardless of how they had parted, he was a good man, and he doesn't deserve to die. 

And she needs to see him before it happens. That much she knows. 

*

She finds herself thankful once again for the quiet privacy of the night shift. She moves through the halls undetected, the few nurses there stare down at paperwork and charts with little frowns of concentration. There is none of the lively hustle and bustle of daytime. This world exists for the sleeping, the vigilant, and the dead. 

He is among the first category, she sees, when she gently pushes open the door to his room and steps inside. Machines beep and whir, some doing their work to keep him alive, others merely monitoring. 

She moves closer to the bed and looks down at him, feeling her heart catch in her throat. He is the same. Perhaps fuller in the face. His hair is shorter. But there is no mistaking that face, a face she only knew briefly but still held dear. 

His hand is cold when she takes it. He surprises her by squeezing, tightly, as her fingers twine with his.

"Mulder?" she whispers. 

His eyes flutter, struggle under the lids. After a moment they open, unfocused, bleary. 

He looks at her for a long moment, his face blank. 

_Oh god,_ she thinks, _this is stupid, he doesn't even remember me, why am I here--_

And then his eyes widen slightly, and when he says her name it comes out choked and raspy. 

She smiles in spite of herself. 

*

She returns home in the morning, neck stiff from a night spent amongst cadavers. Daniel is in the kitchen, drinking his morning coffee. He is impeccable in his starched shirt and tie. The consummate professional.

"You were wrong," she arches an eyebrow, quirks a smile.

"Wrong how?"

"I looked in on Fox Mulder last night," she says. "He was conscious, briefly. I think he's going to pull through." 

Daniel looks at her, his jaw working slightly. Once, a long time ago, she had asked him why he had chosen her. "It was because of how you looked at me," he'd responded. "You looked at me like I could do no wrong. Like I knew more than God. How could anyone resist that?"

*

She does not sleep, although she has pulled the curtains tight to shut out the early morning light. 

She feels feverish, confused. Mulder's face swims in and out of focus, his features taut with concern. 

Why are you concerned, she wants to ask him, when it's you who's in the hospital bed? But she feels the pillow beneath her head, feels the scratch of sheets, the pull of wires, and realizes that she is the one strapped down to machines, she is the one looking up at him with eyes that can't seem to stay open. 

The machines start to wail, and although she can see he is still holding her hand, she can no longer feel it. 

And then she is sitting up in bed, gasping, flailing at sheets that are drenched with sweat. 

So she had slept after all. 

She pulls back the curtains. It is still light, the sun high in the sky. 

She will regret this later, she knows, but she begins to dress anyway. 

*

He is still beneath the thin blanket, attached to so many machines she fears she has imagined his brief consciousness of the previous night.

But when she squeezes his hand, his eyes flutter open almost immediately, and he offers a crooked smile.

"Water?" he asks. 

She shakes her head. "Ice chips." 

He licks his lips and nods. She spoons ice into his mouth and marvels at how intimate this gesture feels. 

"How are you feeling?" she asks him.

He blinks at her, and she laughs softly, ducking her head. 

"Stupid question," she says. "I'm sorry." 

"What are you doing here?" he rasps.

"I work here," she replies. 

"You don't work right here, in this room." 

"I heard you'd been admitted. I... wanted to see if you were all right." 

He regards her curiously, but says nothing. 

"It's been a long time," she says finally, attempting to bridge the silence.

His smile is bitter. "We worked three cases together, Scully. You don't need to hold vigil at my bedside." 

"I've always thought fondly of you," she says. 

He stares at her incredulously for a moment. "You've always thought fondly of me? Jesus Christ." He shakes his head. "Look, you're absolved. You don't owe me anything." 

She feels heat rise in her face.

"Thanks for the ice chips," he says, and turns away. 

Almost a year after leaving the FBI, she had met one of her academy classmates for lunch. They'd swapped stories-- Lee had discovered a key piece of evidence on a high-profile serial killer case and was being fast tracked for promotion. Edwards had displayed some aptitude in unraveling cases of domestic terrorism. Colton had self-destructed on a simple protection detail, and the resulting fallout left two witnesses dead and another agent on life support.

"He's awaiting the results of the disciplinary hearing. Doesn't look good for him." 

She had thought of Mulder, then. Smugly baiting Colton. Feeding him the craziness others had come to expect. Colton rising to the bait and then some, reacting with derision, condescension, anger.

"I don't like to laugh at someone's misfortune," she had replied. "But he had that coming." 

"Spooky Mulder's unit got shut down, you know." 

She had leaned across the table, eyes wide. "The X Files? You're kidding."

"Guess they got sick of wasting their money, huh?"

She had shaken her head, troubled. "Agent Mulder did legitimate work. His theories were out there, but..." 

"Well, he's a lot more grounded now. Back in the BSU. No more little green men." 

No more little green men. 

_Gray._

She is almost at the door, but she hesitates. He is still lying in the bed, his head stubbornly turned away from her. 

"I'm glad you're all right," she says. 

*

She does not go to see him again. She tells herself that he clearly doesn't want to see her, and it is not worth disrupting his life because she feels unfulfilled. 

I left the FBI because it was the wrong choice, she tells herself firmly. The wrong choice. What I am feeling now is just some sort of... seven year itch. It makes sense that I would look back, back to a time that was so different from now. 

Lights in the sky. Huddled, humanoid corpses. Tooms. 

She has a good life here. She is a doctor's wife. He loves her. He left his life for her. ( _And you left yours for him,_ her mind stubbornly insists.) If she has chosen the night shift, chosen to haunt the morgue and work on corpses instead of living people, it is only because some part of her still clings to the idea that good, necessary work comes from forensics. Daniel likes the challenge of a difficult diagnosis, the glory of saving a life others had given up on. She prefers the challenge of following clues like a map, backtracking along the trail that has led someone to her gurney. 

And if she occasionally runs an unnecessary test, she tells herself that it's because she is being thorough. Not because she's looking for something like Tooms to cross her path again. Not because she has grown so bored with murder victims and drownings and heart attacks that she would give anything, anything at all, to turn up a genetic anomaly. Something she could research. Something she could publish. Something to snap her from her ennui.

*

"Dana?" 

Her mother, standing over her. _Why is she here? Did I oversleep, did something happen to Daniel?_

She tries to move but feels the pull of wires, realizes she is strapped down and hooked in. 

The room is stark, white, fluorescent. Machines beep rhythmically. 

_What is this,_ she thinks. _How did I get here?_

And then she is awake again, lying in her own bed, sweat beaded on her forehead.

She sits up shakily, touching a hand to her head. The alarm clock on the nightstand tells her it is four o'clock. She stands and opens the curtains, letting the late afternoon sun flood in. 

She has never put much stock in dreams. That was always Missy's territory. But Missy, always so open, so guileless, so trusting, had been gone for years now. 

She stares out the window at the green grass, the rows of charming, cookie-cutter houses that line the streets of the D.C. suburb where she and Daniel have made a home. 

She takes a long, hard look. And wonders what she has done.


	2. Chapter 2

Her shift lets out at seven, and she showers in the basement locker room, washing away the scent of formaldehyde tinged with sickly sweet decay. She dresses slowly, methodically.

When she is done, she rides the elevator up to the lobby, stepping into sunlight. 

There is a group of young teenage boys gathered on the grass in front of the sliding doors. They are smiling, laughing, full of good-natured horseplay. They kick a ball back and forth to each other, one occasionally missing and diving for it. 

She pauses to watch them for a moment, wondering why they have chosen the front of a hospital for their impromptu game. 

It takes her a moment to realize she is not alone in observing them. A nurse, clad in blue scrubs, has also paused to watch the game. 

"They come here every day," the nurse muses. "Their friend was hit by a car. He's in a coma upstairs. They visit every morning before school, and again on their way home."

Scully turns to look at the nurse, feeling tears prickle at the backs of her eyes. 

"One at a time, they'll come in to visit him," the nurse adds, and as she speaks, a boy passes them on his way outside. His friends look up, wave. He joins the game without speaking. One of the others on the lawn breaks away and enters the building.

Scully watches him go, walking towards the elevator with the calm confidence of one who knows his way. 

She turns back to the laughing teens, to their simple game. The sight haunts her, moves her. Vigils aren't just held with candles and somber faces. 

She leaves before the nurse can see what this sight has done to her. 

*

She does not return home. Does not want to greet Daniel in the midst of his morning routine. Does not want to face the fact that she has awakened to discover herself married to an old man. 

_You knew what you were getting into,_ she tells herself. 

_Yes, but did I know what I would lose?_

She instead strolls through the summer streets of D.C., pausing to notice things she has often simply hurried past. 

When she first arrived here, fresh and eager to start her new path, she had stood in front of the Capital building, proud to be aligning herself with the government, still naïve enough to think She Could Make a Difference. How majestic it had seemed, then. Truth, justice and the American way.

No one told her about dark parking garages and shadowy informants; a world where everyone was in someone else's pocket. 

They hadn't told her about the lone figure in the basement, the man who seemed to believe he could shine a flashlight into all of the world's dark corners and send the rats scuttling away.

Hadn't he needed an ally? Hadn't he deserved more than to be left alone to face a series of professional embarrassments that had finally driven him out of his basement den, sent him, squinting, into the harsh and dishonest light of the upstairs world?

She knows she is cracking up. She knows the nightmares, and the strain of her continued existence with Daniel must be weighing on her more than she had originally thought. Why else would she be dwelling on a man she had only known for such a short, tumultuous time? 

*

Summer bleeds into fall, and she finds herself off duty on Halloween night, facing the prospect of an evening home with her husband, of forced congeniality and shared wine. 

He has invited a student over, a bright-eyed girl of twenty three. Her name is Becky. She has a saddle of freckles over a cute nose. She sips wine and makes scintillating conversation and showers effusive compliments on Dana's cooking. 

Standing there, watching the two of them, she finds herself uncomfortably reminded of Barbara. Barbara, who had stood smiling and slightly off-kilter in her apron, always looking like she wanted to join the conversation but could never find an appropriate moment. How bland she is, Dana had thought all those years ago, how he should have someone who understands that keen mind.

How cool and dry his lips had felt on hers as he walked her to the car. The thrill of wrongness, a feeling she had cravenly chased since nights spent sneaking smokes on the back porch. The validation of being the chosen one, of being the favorite. 

After Becky has left, she stands quietly in the kitchen and watches as Daniel gathers the plates and empty wine glasses. He moves with a surgeon's precision. She is unable to take the look on his face when he turns towards her, so she takes herself to the movies, selecting a late showing of _Night of the Living Dead_ because she knows it is the one thing that Daniel will not insist on accompanying her to. 

"Why would you subject yourself to that crap?" he asks, and she sees him retreat, back to his chair. 

She has hurt him with her distance, she knows. But it has been hard, so hard. Happily ever after did not kick in when he came back for her; she had only allowed herself to be swept away in the illusion for a while. 

He is rigid. He is demanding. He is uncompromising. 

Once, she had found that aspect of his nature to be thrilling. She delighted in impressing him, in hearing his words of approval. 

Now there is only disapproval, only frowning, scowling doubt. She has not lived up to his expectations. She has not become what he had seen in her work, has not performed miracles, has not published new theories, has not saved lives.

She enters the theater wearing a long coat tied against the chill night air. She buys a small popcorn and looks for a seat amidst a sea of faces. They are mostly college students, in costumes of various degrees of creativity. 

"Scully?"

It is his voice, the voice she has secretly wanted to hear for months now, coming from a seat off the aisle directly to her left. She looks down and sees him, pale, thinner, not yet fully recovered but wonderfully alive. He is smiling, although it is a confused smile. 

"This doesn't seem like you're kind of fare," Mulder says, and he glances at the empty seat next to him in unspoken invitation. 

She sits, moving slowly, cautiously. 

"It's Halloween, Mulder. Everyone's entitled to one good scare."

It is strange, to be sitting so close in a darkened room. She is conscious of the fact that she has not yet removed her coat, the fabric of her sleeve brushing against his arm. 

He turns towards her, chewing merrily on the plastic straw from his soda cup. 

She steadily avoids his gaze, and after a moment he sits back in his chair, turning his attention to the screen. 

What am I doing, she asks herself. 

On screen, zombies continue their slow, inevitable march on a farmhouse. She thinks of scientific curiosities, of rocks forever left unturned, of corners left unswept by flashlights. 

The crowd is vocal, full of cheers and gasps and laughter. As the characters on screen begin to debate the merits of staying upstairs versus retreating to the basement, she feels his eyes on her in the dark. 

This time she gives in to the temptation, meets his gaze. His face is unreadable, lit by the screen. 

He leans over so his lips are just barely brushing her ear. 

"Wanna get out of here?" 

*

They go to a pub. Some smoky, dim place that offers a brief respite from the bite of the night air. A pack of college girls dressed as superheroes scatter from the doorway as they enter. 

She sits across from him in a booth and thinks about the last time she faced him in a restaurant. 

They sip their drinks in silence, each waiting the other out. Finally she lets out a breath of self-conscious laughter and puts her glass down.

"What are we doing here, Mulder?"

He shrugs, his face pensive. "Seemed like the thing to do." 

"You look like you're making a full recovery." 

He glances down at his chest and smiles wryly. "Lucky me." 

"How did it happen?"

"Skulk around enough dark warehouses at night and eventually you attract the wrong kind of attention." 

"Was it an interesting case?" She wants to hear about work. She wants to hear about the FBI. She wants to pretend, just for one night, that she belongs here. 

He laughs, and it is a harsh, bitter sound. "No, I, uh, I'm not with the Bureau any more." 

She looks back at him, eyes wide, startled. "I heard that the X Files had been shut down a few years ago. That you were back profiling." 

"Yeah," he says, shifting uncomfortably. "A couple of years ago I got mixed up in something I shouldn't have. I thought a man I had put away might have new evidence. He, uh, escaped from my custody. Killed a little girl before we managed to recover him." 

The look on his face rocks her. "Mulder, I--"

He shakes his head, "Don't. It's all right. I was using my job as a way to justify my own personal causes. Innocent people died because of me." 

She stares down into her drink, feeling tears threaten. Instead of giving in, she lifts her head, meets his eyes. Forces a smile. "So, what do you do now?"

He laughs, and this time it is a little more genuine. "I freelance, mostly. Omni. UFO mags. There's an audience out there for someone with a... knack for getting into places he doesn't belong." 

"And that's how you..." she trails off, glancing down at his chest. 

His hand goes there, rubs gently. "I never saw who fired. When I came to, I was in an empty room, in a warehouse that looked like it hadn't been used for years. I managed to drag myself out the door and to a phone, and the rest, as they say, is history." He is smiling as he takes his next sip of beer. 

She attempts a shaky smile back. 

"So," he shrugs and leans forward. "Is the world of medicine everything you hoped for? Saving lives left and right?" 

She shakes her head with a sad little smile. "I'm still slicing and dicing, Mulder. I just wear a different badge now." 

They regard each other across the table for a moment. 

"I'm glad I saw you," Mulder says.

She opens her mouth to speak, but he holds up a finger, silencing her.

"No, I mean it. I'm sorry I was rude when you stopped by. You and I didn't always see eye to eye, but you respected the journey. That meant something, and I've never thought badly of you for your choice." 

Liar, she thinks, but does not say.

Three drinks later, her tongue has been loosened and she finds herself in the midst of an enthusiastic debate over spontaneous cell regeneration. 

"Just like salamanders," Mulder is saying, his voice a little slurred, his eyes bright.

She is shaking her head vigorously. "Mulder, a salamander is not a human being. This comes back to basic biology. What you're describing-- it's science fiction. It's something out of a comic book." 

His eyes are gleaming. "I investigated a string of murder robberies once. The killer left notes. All written with his right hand. Except, his right hand had been amputated years before." 

She shakes her head again, laughs. "Mulder--"

"Turns out, he'd been experimented on in prison. A doctor re-grew his hand. From salamander cells."

"You have proof of this?"

He smiles, shrugs his shoulders. 

"Mulder, without proof all you have is a good campfire story." 

He is still smiling. "The proof is there. You just have to know where to look." 

"And you're saying that I don't know where to look?"

"I'm saying that most people don't. Not unless you're open to certain... extreme possibilities."

She thinks again of Eugene Tooms, of the possibilities he presented. Possibilities that frightened her. Possibilities that fascinated her. Possibilities left unexplored.

In no time at all, it seems, the lights are coming up in the pub. The barman is telling them to leave. She glances around in surprise to see that there are only a handful of people left.

"I haven't closed a bar since college," he says to her, smiling as he holds the door open. 

The city streets are dark, still, devoid of life. 

She glances down at her watch. The time has crept just past three in the morning. 

He seems energized, enlivened. The tipsy haze has burned off. 

She cautiously meets his eyes. He is staring back at her, his expression once again unreadable.

Just old colleagues, she says to herself. Old friends, meeting for a drink or two. Just catching up. 

Right, she tells herself, and Daniel invited that student over because he's impressed with her coursework. 

Mulder is standing close to her, his eyes searching her face. If she doesn't move or say something, she thinks he may try and kiss her. 

_Is this what we would have been,_ she wonders, _if I hadn't walked away? Or is it simply a combination of too much alcohol, nostalgia for the past, and the realization that although I am married, I am still very much alone?_

(If she's stabilized, why isn't she waking up?)

She sways on her feet slightly, pinching the bridge of her nose. Mulder blinks, steps back almost imperceptibly. 

"You should go home," he tells her. "It's late." 

He is right, she knows he is right, and yet she still has to struggle to tear herself away. 

"Take care of yourself, Mulder," she tells him.

She leaves him there, standing underneath a streetlight. She makes it halfway down the block before she chances a glance over her shoulder. He is still standing there, leaning against the post. In that moment, he is the most desperately lonely sight she has ever seen.

Her actions at war with her better judgment, she turns, crosses the short distance to him.

He regards her with mild surprise and a questioning smile.

"That warehouse," she says. "Take me there." 

*

It is a small, low building in the midst of a decrepit industrial park. It is nondescript, overgrown, dark. There are broken windows, and cast off trash littering the ground. 

She takes in the sight and thinks, _Mulder almost died here._

How long it might have been before he was found. Before anyone even pieced together what had happened to him. 

She thinks of him dragging his bleeding body through the sharp-edged gravel, through the weeds, past the empty beer cans. What it must have taken to keep moving, to not stop and go belly up under the starry sky. 

"There's nothing here," he says. He has his flashlight out, is moving towards the door, not at all affected by his brush with mortality in this place, treading on weeds that had, only months prior, greedily sucked up his blood. 

"What drew you here?"

He glances over his shoulder. "I received an anonymous tip." 

"Of what?" 

"It was vague." 

"Did you see anything, before you were shot?" 

He grins, and his teeth gleam briefly in the darkness. "I saw enough." 

She sighs and steps further into the warehouse, her heels clicking on concrete. It is empty, of course, looks like it has been empty for years. 

The windows are dull and filmy. The concrete floor is cracked and coated with dust-- her shoes leave imprints behind her. She sweeps a flashlight beam into a far corner and sees a disturbance; dust swept away, a dark smear through the filth. Where Mulder fell.

She turns back to him, already knowing this is useless. There is nothing here. Maybe there never was. Maybe he was shot by a vagrant, or accidentally stumbled into the midst of a drug deal while seeking conspiracies, gazing up at the sky while he should have been looking right in front of him. 

Maybe.

Her flashlight illuminates something, briefly, some litter, some detritus. She should just pass it by. It is nothing. 

Instead, she steps forward. Crouches to investigate. It is a rat, partially hidden in a disconnected pipe. Its tail hangs down limply. Her flashlight beam has caught on a patch of white fur. Easy to miss. Mostly concealed. 

The rat has died in the midst of its escape. She glances around helplessly, not wanting to touch it with bare hands. 

"What do you see?" Mulder is right behind her. She jumps. She did not hear him approach. 

"Probably nothing," she says. "Do you have gloves?"

He produces them from his pocket. She does not ask him why he has brought prophylactic to the movies on Halloween night. 

She snaps them on, reaches without hesitation into the pipe, and brings out the rat. She cannot help but gasp.

"Still nothing?" he asks her.

"No," she says. "This is something."


	3. Chapter 3

Daniel is standing in the kitchen, buttoned up and impeccable, when she lets herself in. 

She is anything but. 

She does not meet his eyes, but instead moves straight to the coffee pot he has left half-full. 

"Where were you?" His voice is quiet, his question loud and clear.

"I always come home at this hour," she says. 

"That's not an answer." 

She lifts her chin and eyes him defensively. "I met an old friend at the movies." 

"I see." 

What can she say? That she has spent the night on her hands and knees in a filthy warehouse, collecting evidence? That she has, for the first time in seven some odd years, allowed herself to slip back into an old role, allowed herself to pretend that she is a different kind of professional than the one she has become?

That she has gone in to work on her night off, clutching a tiny souvenir of her trespasses? That she has spent the wee hours of the morning running tests and performing an autopsy on a rat? 

That she has enjoyed every weird and inexplicable moment of it? 

No. Better to let him think she is having an affair. It will be easier that way. Something he can process. 

He sips his coffee and regards her quietly. She can see the wheels in his head turning. "You have mud on you," he says finally.

She glances down. There is, indeed, a smear of dirt down the side of her pants. 

They stand there, silently, for a long moment. 

How much of their relationship has been defined by silence, she thinks. Retreating to their corners, each lost in their own disappointment and disillusionment with each other. 

She is so accustomed to the silence, to the silent judgment that when he speaks his voice makes her jump. 

"Are you happy with me, Dana?" 

She looks at him, blinking in surprise. He is holding his coffee cup and watching her. 

"I..." 

"When we first met, I saw something in you. You had a spark. You were one of the finest students I ever had." 

The corners of her lips turn up, ever so slightly. She knows this, has always known this, but rarely tires of being reminded.

"And now?" She asks with raised eyebrow, already knowing the answer.

"Wasted potential," he says frankly. "What made you leave? We've never talked about it." 

No, she thinks, we haven't. You came back and I went willingly and it was all forgotten. All left in the past.

"I left because of you," she says. She is surprised by how easily the words come.

He puts his coffee cup down. His hands are trembling. "Because of me?"

"What we had started, it was... it was so..." She shakes her head with a humorless laugh. "You were also the most magnetic and captivating man I'd ever known. You were also married, Daniel. You had a family. And I saw what you were willing to do to them on account of me, and it terrified me. I lost faith in everything. My vocation. I wanted to get away from medicine. From you. And the FBI presented itself at precisely the right moment." 

It has come out in a big rush. She is surprised by her words, but feels no regret. Only relief. 

He studies her with damp eyes. "So why did you come with me?"

She shrugs, glancing away. "I thought of you so frequently. You were the life I didn't choose. There was a part of me that always wondered if it was real at all, if I'd ever meant anything to you, or if it was just a game." 

He looks stricken.

"You showed up at my door the morning after I'd had a brush with death. The enormity of that gesture, of what you'd given up for me, was overwhelming." 

"It all happened very fast," he concedes.

"It felt right," she nods. "At the time." 

"And now?"

She does not answer, instead moves to the window, looks out into the sunlight. 

"Dana?"

She turns back towards him. "I think you know." 

He is clenching his teeth, his jaw working rhythmically. 

"This is my house," he says finally.

She stares at him for a moment in quiet disbelief. "You should call your daughter, Daniel. I'm sure she'd like to hear from you." 

He does not speak as she turns and retreats to the bathroom and the respite of a hot shower.

*

"What did you find?" His voice is hushed, eager. 

"I'm not sure," she confesses, holding the phone to her ear. "The rat we found was suffering from a massive infection." 

"What kind of infection?"

"Mulder, it looked a lot like smallpox." 

It is impossible not to think of the rat's tiny, bloated corpse. Pustules and masses distorting the head and shoulders. Blackened tongue poking through its lips. 

"What are the odds of a rat picking up a bad case of smallpox in a deserted industrial park?"

She sighs. "Impossible. Smallpox has been eradicated." 

"So if not smallpox, then what?"

"I don't know," she admits. "It's a similar disease, but not entirely the same. It seemed to be attacking the rat on a cellular level." 

"A mutation?"

"The odds of a spontaneous mutation like this--" 

"Then what?"

She sighs, closes her eyes. "Mulder, I don't know. This is a piece of the whole. Without more to go on, all we're doing is guessing." 

"If someone is developing a weaponized version of smallpox, don't you think we should be doing everything in our power to--"

"Weaponized smallpox?" she laughs. "That's a stretch, Mulder. What possible use could anyone have for a disease we have already cured?"

He is silent. It speaks volumes.

"Mulder?"

"What if it's not human?"

"Are you trying to tell me you think this virus could be alien?"

"I've seen things. There is evidence of alien life, Scully. Sentient alien life. And our government may be colluding with them."

Oh, dear god.

She sits down on the bed, shutting her eyes. 

"Mulder, do you realize how crazy that sounds?"

"You haven't seen the things that I have." 

There is an unspoken accusation there, she thinks. 

"There is absolutely no evidence that this--"

"Run your tests, Scully," he insists. "If it's there, you'll find it." 

*

She finds it. 

She heads straight downstairs to the morgue three hours before she is due to start her scheduled shift. 

The rat is waiting for her, in a small box in refrigeration. She takes it out, spreads it open on the metal autopsy table. 

The skin is puckered and riddled with lesions consistent with smallpox. Her tests have confirmed as much.

It is the organs that confuse and concern her. She had originally surmised that the disease was altered in such a way to attack on a cellular level. 

Yet...

The internal organs have begun to jelly. They have a strange translucence to them that is not consistent with decay. The skin along the belly is edematous, the fur coming off in sticky patches. 

This rat has died badly, and not from something as relatively mundane as smallpox. 

She works quickly, fervently, unaware of the hours bleeding by, knowing that she will be here long after her shift is over just to catch up on the real work, the actual work that she has allowed to pile up in favor of this diversion.

Had she once led a life where the horror spread out in front of her was the reality, all the rest of the world a diversion? Had she once had that, and let it go, given it up?

"You just can't get enough of basement offices, can you?"

His voice behind her makes her jump, whirl around. He is leaning in the doorway, wearing a white lab coat.

"It makes everyone uncomfortable to have this kind of activity take place on the main floor," she says.

"I know the feeling," Mulder smiles, tugging the lab coat off.

She frowns. "How did you get down here?"

He smiles, gestures to the coat in his hand. "Master of disguise."

She gestures for him to come inside, shuts the door. Her heart is pounding.

"Mulder, this rat didn't die from smallpox." 

He glances at the tiny, spread-open body on the gurney, and grimaces. "What did it die of?"

"Something I've never seen before. The smallpox was a distraction. I think it's being used as a delivery system for something else." 

"What are you saying?"

"Someone has genetically engineered smallpox to carry another virus." 

"What kind of virus?"

She is trembling. "One I've never seen before." 

He looks back to the rat. "Something this rat contracted in the warehouse?"

"No," she says, and he looks up in surprise. "Not contracted. This is a white rat, Mulder. A lab rat."

"You're saying that experiments were being done in that warehouse." 

"I'm saying someone likely had a very good reason to shoot you."

They lock eyes over the gurney. She is flushed with discovery, he with the surprise of validation. 

"Your source," she says. "The one who led you to the warehouse. Can you find him?"

"He finds me," Mulder says. "It's less frequent now." 

"Whoever is working on this virus, whatever their motivations, we cannot allow this to get out into the general population." 

He holds her gaze for a long moment. "That bad?"

"Worse," she says. 

She has never seen anything like this. She cannot explain to him how it chills her blood, that something so small could cause such devastation. How with every test, with every cut, her dread has grown. 

He is studying her face, reading her expression, seeming to see her for the first time. 

He's gauging me, she thinks. Weighing whether or not he can trust me. 

Then he nods, almost imperceptibly. "Come on." 

"I can't leave," she says helplessly. "I have a job to do." 

"They're dead," Mulder shrugs. "I don't think they're going anywhere." 

*

He leads her down dark alleys, into parts of the city she has not dared to go alone. They stop in front of a nondescript steel door, and she is surprised when he knocks. 

It is opened almost immediately by a small, bespectacled, frog-like man, who blinks up in surprise. 

"The prodigal son returns." 

"Let us in, Frohike. This is serious," Mulder says.

She looks at the man before them and wonders how anything can be serious ever again.

The room she is led into is small, cramped with computer monitors, wires, and curiosities. Two other men peer curiously at them, lit by computer light. 

"No way," the first man, says, stepping forward to clap Mulder on the shoulder. He has long, stringy yellow hair and carries a faint odor of marijuana. 

"This is a surprise," says the other man, looking decidedly out of place in a neat suit. 

"Who's the babe?" the small man who has let them in asks. 

"Scully," Mulder says, turning towards her with an apologetic smile. "Meet the Lone Gunmen." 

"Dana Scully?" the small man, the one Mulder has called Frohike, says with mild surprise. 

"No time for small talk," Mulder says, brushing past. "I have something I need you to look at. Test results." 

The suited man looks startled. "You show up here after god knows how many years and expect us to run tests for you?"

"Happy to see you, too, Byers." 

"He has a point," the yellow haired man says. He has stepped back, is regarding Mulder with crossed arms.

There is silence, that great divider she has grown so familiar with. 

She speaks without meaning to. "Whatever history there may be here, I urge you to listen to him. If you can help in any way... you could be averting a disaster of unmitigated proportions." 

The three men exchange glances.

"He's been poaching our readership for years," the small man says grumpily, but he holds out a hand, clad in fingerless gloves, for the folder Mulder offers. 

*

She leaves them, hours later, hunched over computers an analyzing test results in agreeable, if not quite companionable, silence. 

She says she is going home to shower and change, but instead drives to her mother's house.

Her mother greets her with a baffled yet welcoming smile, and the kind of hug that only family can perfect. 

"Is everything all right?"

The question hangs in the room. 

"Yes," she replies. "No. I don't know." 

Her mother gets up to make tea, that eternal comfort. Shortly after, over steaming mugs, she begins to speak.

"Mom, do you believe I made the right choice?"

"That's a loaded question," her mother says cautiously. "You've made many choices." 

"Leaving the FBI. Daniel." 

"Oh," her mother says. 

"Dad never spoke about it," she says, and feels the tears begin to threaten. "I always sensed he was disappointed that I left medicine, but I never got the sense from him that he was pleased with my decision to return, either. And then he... before... I never even got to ask." 

It has come out in a rush, all of the words she has kept locked inside for far too many years. She had stood silently and stoically at her father's funeral, Daniel still and supportive behind her, never speaking. So much silence.

"Dana," her mother is smiling sadly. "All your father ever wanted was for you to be your own person. To make your own decisions. To trust what is in your own heart. He wanted what every parent wants for their child." 

She nods, sniffling, and sips her tea.

"What brought this on?" the question is gentle, probing. "Are you and Daniel having difficulties?"

She laughs at that, covering her mouth with her hand. Difficulties. It is such a mild word. "Mom, we are miles apart." 

"Did you return to medicine because it was what you wanted? Or what he wanted?" Her mother asks gently. She is good, too good, at getting to the heart of the matter. 

"I ran into someone I used to work with," she says. "Someone I hadn't thought of in years. And now... I'm beginning to think I took a wrong turn somewhere. There is so much I haven't done." 

"Life is a series of choices," her mother says, smiling over at the family photos on the wall. "You just need to make the ones you can live with."

She is thinking of Missy. Dear, trusting Missy. So willing to open her door and her heart to the wrong people. 

What a world we live in, she thinks. Where men can whisper in the shadows about choices so terrible as to be unspeakable. Where a woman can be led astray by the traitorous pull of her own heart. Where a mother has to face a phone call in the dead of night that a corpse matching her daughter's description has been found, nude and violated in a ditch. 

She had insisted on identifying the body. So still and blue on the metal table. A face so placid in death, so devoid of the light and mischief that defined a life. Dirt on the cheeks and under fingernails. A livid bruise under one eye. 

Just one more case forever left unsolved. 

Daniel had stood behind her for that funeral, too. She had held her mother's hand and leaned against her brother for support, and did not once turn to her husband. 

I should have known then, she thinks. 

"Will you come for Thanksgiving?" Her mother asks softly. She has followed Dana's gaze to the photograph, seems to know the dark turn her thoughts have taken.

"Yes," she replies. "But I think Daniel may have other plans this year." 

Her mom smiles. "If you are asking my permission for a divorce--"

"I know the church doesn't allow it." 

"Your life is your own, Dana. You have to do what you feel is right." 

If I don't know what's right, I'll settle for knowing what's wrong, she thinks but does not say. 

The cell phone in her pocket trills gently. She picks it up, steps away from the table and her mother's questioning gaze to answer it. 

"We got it," Mulder says.


	4. Chapter 4

There are no questions when she returns to the strange little hideaway still wearing the clothes she left in. If they notice at all, they do not let on. 

The heavy, awkward tension in the room has dissipated. They are working purposefully, with a familiarity that speaks to their prior history. 

"Look at this," Mulder says, sidling over to her.

She looks.

"Genetic code?" 

He nods. "Byers discovered it. It's sort of a genetic signature. Used by a company called Roush."

"The genetic version of anti-piracy software," Langly pipes up. 

"So this company, Roush, created the virus?" 

"They'll never admit to it," Byers says.

"Roush is a sort of hotbed of government contracts. They operate at the highest level of secrecy," Frohike adds.

She sees the looks they are exchanging. She thinks she may know where this is leading. 

"Mulder," she says. 

He looks up at her, meets her gaze. 

"If what you're saying is true, then there's a strong possibility our own government has a hand in this." 

He nods.

She wonders how he can be so nonchalant about it, as though the knowledge does not shake him. 

She wonders if he has always been this paranoid; if he ever truly believed in the government the way she once did. 

"It's been a long time since you boys have done any breaking and entering," he says. "Up for it?"

*

She has begun to have difficulty telling day from night. She has not slept since the day before Halloween, and even then her slumber was tainted by strange dreams and restlessness. 

She rides in the back of a Volkswagen bus, wedged between Mulder and Frohike. Their knees are touching. The sky is a hazy gray that could be either just before sunrise or just after sunset. 

It has to be evening, she thinks. I saw my mother this afternoon.

She leans her head against the seat rest, shuts her eyes. 

And opens them on a steel table. 

There is a man in a surgical mask standing over here. She wants it to be Daniel but it is not-- she can see that his eyes are different behind his glasses. 

She follows his eyes downward, sees herself laid open before him. Cold skin and blood and surgical dressings. 

She tries to scream but is intubated. Tries to move but cannot so much as twitch a finger. 

Instead she sits forward, gasping. The cold sterile scent of the operating room is replaced by pine air freshener and dirty socks. 

Both Mulder and Frohike are looking at her. Ahead, through the windshield, she sees only darkness and streetlights. 

"Are you all right?" Mulder asks softly. 

She exhales loudly, rubbing her eyes. She is rattled but does not want him to see her face.

"Not enough sleep," she says.

He seems to accept this and resumes looking out the window. 

"We're almost there," Langly says over his shoulder. 

She steadies herself, tries to imagine a universe where what they are about to do is not crazy. 

Roush is headquartered in a nondescript building. The lights are off. The parking lot is empty. 

They park a half mile away, on a side street. 

She is dressed in black and about to trespass. She is surrounded by men who have made a career out of paranoia.

Somehow, this feels right.

She wonders if this casts doubt on her own sanity. 

She decides that she doesn't care.

Frohike stays behind in the van, a laptop open in front of him. 

"Godspeed," he tells them. 

She follows Mulder, Langly and Byers through a wooded area, their boots crunching over fallen leaves. She can see her breath pluming in front of her. 

Byers has wire clippers out. "Just so I make myself clear," he says as he begins snipping the chain link fence in front of them. "I think this is a terrible idea."

Mulder ignores him and slips through the hole. Langly follows. 

Byers politely holds the fencing aside for her. 

She hesitates. "Mulder--" 

He squints at her from the shadows. "This isn't your battle, Scully. I won't hold it against you." 

"Liar," she murmurs. 

_If I go through this hole, I will be willingly walking away from everything I once thought important or valuable, she thinks. Down the rabbit hole, so to speak. There is no going back from this. It's a criminal act. If I am not a hundred percent committed, best to turn around now._

"Scully?" Byers asks gently.

She steps forward and wriggles through the small hole has cut in the fence. She feels the steel tines pull at her shirt for a moment and then she is through, stumbling down a grassy hill into the back parking lot of Roush Industries. 

Mulder meets her eyes questioningly, and she smiles gamely at him. She is in this, now. No going back. 

The four of them jog towards the back door. She finds herself suddenly terrified that they will round a corner and find dogs, stealthy Dobermans with their ears pricked up and their muzzles pulled back to bare gleaming, deadly teeth. 

There is nothing. Only the glass door, gleaming before them. 

"We're here," Mulder gasps into his headset.

Frohike must be working quickly in the van. She hears a hiss as the pneumatic locks on the door release. They crowd through it. 

"Control room is on the left," Mulder says, and Langly and Byers break off in that direction without hesitation. 

"They'll take care of disabling alarms and cameras," Mulder says. It is clear that they have done this sort of thing before. 

"What exactly are we looking for?" She glances around with some trepidation. 

"We'll know it when we find it." He is smiling, in spite of the sweat beaded on his face. This is his forte. 

"Clear." Langly's voice comes through over the headset.

Mulder tugs on her sleeve, leading her out of the entryway and into a dark hallway. He is breathing hard, and she has a moment to wonder what kind of strain he is putting on his heart; his chest so recently put back together. 

"Pick a door," he mutters as they round a corner. 

She chooses one labeled Research and Development, and steps inside. It is an ordinary, albeit small, office. There are three desks, three computers. Filing cabinets. One of the desks has several framed photos clustered around the monitor. Smiling children. 

This does not look like the lair of secret government masterminds.

She sighs and steps back into the hallway. Mulder is just coming out of a room across the hall.

"Anything?" He asks her. 

She scowls and shakes her head. 

She opens the next door, stepping over the threshold. 

The room is dark, but the temperature is cool-- far cooler than the hallway and the office she has just left behind. 

"Hey," she murmurs.

Mulder comes into the room behind her. "Whoa." 

There is a thick hum in the room. The kind of hum that comes from electrical equipment, or heavy machinery. The kind of hum that does not belong in a mundane office building. 

In the center of the room is a large gray box. She steps around it, craning her neck up. She cannot see over the top. 

"Engine?" Mulder asks, placing his hand on the metal surface. He withdraws it quickly.

"Hot?" 

He shakes his head, looks troubled.

She places her hand on the box, feeling an unpleasant vibration beneath her palm. She pulls her hand away, massaging it thoughtfully. There is something uncomfortably organic about the feeling. 

He is panning around the room, running his flashlight over all surfaces. Save for the strange, humming box, the room is sterile, white, devoid of any explanation. 

"Want to try and open it?" He asks, but his voice is doubtful. 

She shakes her head, wishing she could shake the awful feeling of the vibrating metal. "Let's move on." 

They move into the next room, no longer making pretenses of splitting up and searching independently. 

"Oh," Mulder says, stopping short. 

They are in another office-- ordinary, plain. There are desks, computers, printers. She does not, at first, see what he sees. 

Then he casts a beam of light over it-- a monkey, deceased and diseased, bobbing in a jar of yellow fluid. 

She steps forward to investigate, and recognizes immediately the outer symptoms of smallpox, masking the internal symptoms of something else, something more sinister. The skin is translucent, jellied; she can see through to the organs beneath. 

She looks back over her shoulder at him, and he nods enthusiastically, gesturing to the jar. 

"Mulder, they'll notice immediately that this is gone," she protests. 

She goes to pick it up anyway, knowing she has already slipped into the realm of insanity just by being in the building, when her eyes slide to something else on the counter. 

Photos. Glossy eight by tens. 

She picks them up, wondering why someone would have gone to such trouble to photograph corn crops. The rows are serene, peaceful, green under blue skies. 

She flips through the photos, frowning, and then stops. She stares down at a photo of a honeycomb, awash with bees. 

"Mulder, the box..."

He approaches from the shadows, his expression hungry with curiosity. 

"Bees," she says, holding up the picture. "It's bees."

"How can you be sure?"

She thinks of the unpleasant, organic hum. "I'm sure." 

"Why would they be keeping bees in an office building?" 

She smiles at him. "You just keep on asking the big questions, don't you?"

"What if..."

Her smile fades to a frown. "What?"

"Bear with me, Scully," he says. "I'm a little rusty on this front." 

She tucks the photographs under her arm, reaches out to gently touch his shoulder. 

"Could they be using bees as a vessel for the virus?"

She shakes her head slowly. "I'm not an entomologist, but I don't see how there's any practical way to infect a swarm of bees with a virus."

"What if they're not infected?" He is looking at her with slow dawning horror. "What if they're just carrying it?" 

She blinks back at him, not following his train of thought. 

"What if it's in the plants?" He points at the pictures under her arm.

She follows his gaze. Serene corn crops. Miles and miles of neat, even rows. Just about the least suspicious thing one could think of. 

She feels her heart drop at the thought. 

She has a moment to wonder about paranoia, how infectious it is, how she could wake up one morning from a normal, reasonable life and begin seeing conspiracies in vegetable crops. 

Am I really that far away from a padded cell, she wonders. 

Then she looks at the monkey; all of its distorted wrongness. She thinks of that out in the world, and she shudders. 

"We should go," Mulder says softly. 

She nods, moves towards him.

"Wait," he says. He is fumbling in his pocket for something. There is a hiss and a flare of light.

He has lit a match.

"Mulder," she says warningly. 

"I don't have another way to stop this," he says. "Do you?"

"We can call someone," she says desperately.

"You haven't seen the things I've seen," he says. "They'll cover it up. They always cover it up." 

"This is a criminal act," she says, knowing she is fighting a losing battle. "You... you were once a part of law enforcement. You know that this isn't the right way." 

"The law didn't want me on their side anymore," he says, and drops the match. 

File folders light up, edges curling. Smoke begins to climb. 

"Come on," he says. He has picked up the jar with its grotesque prize bobbing within. 

She looks at his face, cast in a red glow. His eyes are dark, his jaw set. 

They turn together and rush from the room, heels pounding down the hallway. 

"Come on," he yells into the control room, and Langly and Byers abandon their posts. 

They burst out into the parking lot, icy, fresh air assaulting them. 

"What the hell are you doing?" Byers demands. His face is red, flushed with anger.

Mulder wordlessly holds up the jar. "Hopefully stalling their plans." 

They stand there, a quiet foursome, watching as the flames rise. Her hand finds his and grips tightly. 

Please, she thinks, let this be enough.

*

It is dawn when she arrives home, filthy, ash on her face and the smell of smoke in her clothes and hair. 

Her belongings are stacked neatly in the hall, rows of suitcases and boxes. 

The house has been stripped of her personality. The wedding pictures are gone from the mantel. The rug she had picked out for the living room has been rolled up and removed. 

For a moment she thinks she may sink to the floor in tears, thinks that he will find her there, groveling and sniffling, but her own resolve surprises her. She grimly grasps the handle of the first suitcase and drags it outside towards her car. 

*

"Hi," she says when her mom opens the door. 

"Dana?" Her mother reaches out to touch the smudge of ash on her cheek. "What--"

"Can I stay here for a while?" She asks, her voice hitching. It is here, now, in the comforting arms of family, that she finally allows the tears to fall. 

When she finally steps into the shower she feels hollow, numb. The hot water beats down on her shoulders, sending soot and dirt spiraling into the drain. 

A part of her, the part of her still tethered to the real world, expects to hear sirens bearing down any moment. But all she hears is the rush of the water, and her own harsh breathing. 

If he's right--

He's right. 

_If,_ her mind stubbornly insists. _If he's right, we've stopped it._

What about the corn? You didn't burn the corn.

It can't be that far reaching. Her brain, so orderly and neat, simply will not allow for it. Conspiracies may exist, but they cannot be so vast. Human nature intrinsically works against it. The bigger the conspiracy, the more people entrusted with its secrets. The more people keeping a secret, the more likely one of them will slip. 

A week ago, she grieves, I had a normal life. 

But that is not true, and she knows it. Her life has not been normal since she first wandered into Fox Mulder's basement lair. She has simply taken a long vacation, a foray into the world of the everyday, the mundane. She is back where she belongs now, back in the shadows she has persistently and obsessively been chasing. 

With Daniel's influence, she could have had any position in the hospital she wanted. He was willing to sponsor, willing to fund any recertification she might have needed. 

Instead, she sought death. Comforting, stiff puzzles she could study and unravel. Still solving mysteries, absent a badge and gun. 

And now this. 

What could we have accomplished if we were both still on the right side of the law, she wonders. Would it have come to this?

She stands under the water until it runs cold, then finally steps out into the steamy bathroom, wrapping herself in a towel. 

She looks at herself in the mirror, distorted by steam and condensation, and sighs. 

It is, she thinks, an accurate reflection.

*

She does not contact him. 

The first night, she sits in her mother's guest room, tears streaming silently down her face as she watches a brief news report on the fire. 

There is no speculation, only a quick mention that faulty wiring may have caused the blaze. Arson is not mentioned as a possibility. 

She wonders why it has not come up. They were unprepared, and could not have been any more obvious. 

Perhaps Roush wishes to avoid deeper investigation. Or perhaps it is more difficult than she assumes to discover the source of complete immolation. 

Mulder has the monkey, she knows. He cannot, however, go public with it without implicating himself in Roush's destruction. She has no doubt that there will be groups of scientists eager to discredit, to insist that there is a less sinister explanation. 

Her mother does not bother her, seems to attribute her tears and general melancholy to the situation with Daniel. She does nothing to dispel this belief, although Daniel has crossed her mind only briefly, almost an afterthought. 

She has willingly sought trouble, she knows. Nostalgia for the past has bred dissatisfaction with her present. She wanted an adventure, and has gotten exactly that. 

He has called her cell phone several times. She has not yet brought herself to listen to the messages, although she imagines that they will be rapid, full of lively interest and paranoid enthusiasm. He has bought a one-way ticket to madness, and has invited her along for the ride.

It speaks to her frame of mind, she thinks, that she is seriously considering accompanying him. 

*

"There are other branches of Roush," Mulder says on her voicemail.

She is unsurprised. A company with such vast government funding would not operate solely out of one office building. 

"There are other biotechnology companies operating under their umbrella, as well. This is far reaching, Scully. I don't know if we can stop it in time." 

She wants to call him back, ask him his plan. She fears she knows.

_We can't burn down the world, Mulder,_ she thinks. 

"The Gunmen are going to put an alert out. They have a small readership base, but it's a loyal one. This might tip off the right people." 

How ineffectual it all seems. Words on a page against an enemy with no face. 

She hesitates, considers calling him back, does not.

*

Her brother, at the door, with an armload of baby and baggage. Her sister in-law, holding the hand of a toddler in winter clothing. 

"Happy Thanksgiving," he says, and then winks. "So I guess things didn't work out with gramps?" 

She dignifies that with an eye roll, albeit a half hearted one, and moves past her brother to hug Tara. 

Warm holiday scent fills the air. There is a turkey in the oven, a pumpkin pie cooling on the windowsill. 

"Seriously," Bill says, coming behind her, putting a warm strong hand on her shoulder. "I think you're doing the right thing. Never much liked the guy." 

"Could have fooled me," she says, smiling. 

"You hid your feelings very well," Tara smirks as she brushes by, baby cradled in her arms. 

Bill shrugs sheepishly, shoving his hands in his jean pockets. "Just wanted the best for my baby sister, that's all." 

She sighs indulgently and pats his arm. "I'm eternally grateful." 

And she is, she thinks. Grateful, that is. Just a little.


	5. Chapter 5

The turkey is nearly finished cooking, and she is standing upstairs in the guest room, watching Tara change the baby. Matthew sits on the floor a few feet away, crashing Matchbox cars into each other and making little squeals of glee. 

She watches mother and child with a quiet curiosity. Daniel has never wanted children, had always been vocally dismissive of the idea. One was enough, he'd groused. They take over your life and then have the nerve to be ungrateful about it.

There is nothing ungrateful about the baby lying on the bed. She babbles and gurgles up at Tara with a sweet little smile. 

She watches, and muses, and wonders if she has missed out. 

Tara looks up, smiles. "She's being so good. I'm relieved." 

She moves into the room, smiling down at the child. "She's not always like this?"

"Screamed through the entire flight. I thought they were going to hand us parachutes and pitch us out the cargo door." 

"She's lovely." 

"She has Bill's nose," Tara says.

They smile at each other, sisterly camaraderie that is not yet comfortable beyond simple pleasantries. She likes Tara. Finds her smiling, gentle presence to be a good balance for her brother, who has always been temperamental. Yet when small talk has been exhausted, she often finds herself at a loss for what to say to her sister-in-law. 

"I just burned down a government research facility because of something I found while autopsying a rat" did not, exactly, seem like a good conversation starter. 

Instead, her eyes pass over, and pause, on an item on the bedside dresser.

"Reading anything interesting?" She asks, craning her neck to see the title. 

Tara flushes, picks up the book. "I'm a sucker for thrillers. It drives Bill crazy. You know him, I'm sure. Nonfiction or bust." 

She takes the book from Tara's hand, studies it. 

"This guy, he writes these incredibly realistic apocalyptic thrillers. I have all of his books-- this is the most recent. I always--" she giggles, covering her mouth. "I keep wishing someone would make movies out of them. They're just so damn riveting, you know? Like, how can anyone come up with this stuff?"

"Dr. Alvin Kurtzveil," Scully reads, tracing his name with her finger. "I've never heard of him." 

"He's not exactly on the best-seller lists," Tara says, giggles again. "I finished reading it on the plane. If you want to borrow it, go ahead." 

She hesitates. Overwrought thrillers have never been her preferred genre. But Tara looks so genuine, so earnest, so eager to connect, that she accepts the book with a smile. 

*

She begins paging through while her mother bastes the turkey. Sits on the couch to read it Tara and Bill fuss over a casserole. Feels her skin begin to crawl as the words on the page begin to seem familiar, much too familiar, to be coincidental. 

When her mother calls them to the table, she stands and moves on wooden legs to the dining room. 

Matthew is merrily gumming a crescent roll. 

Tara and Bill sit, shoulder to shoulder, whispering to each other with a comfortable ease that she has never known in her own marriage. 

The air outside is cold, but it is sunny, and a dining room window is open to let out some of the heat generated from the oven. The curtains flutter gently in the breeze.

She cannot get the words on the page out of her mind. The United States government, colluding with extraterrestrials, facilitating colonization. Working in secret to develop a vaccine for themselves even while putting plans in motion to disseminate the virus to the unsuspecting public. 

A virus transmitted by bees. 

"Mashed potatoes?" Her mother smiles, offers her the dish.

"I'm sorry," she says, standing and stepping quickly away from the table. 

She goes to her room, fumbles for her phone. Her heart in her throat as she dials, praying that he will pick up, hoping he is not off with family somewhere, celebrating the holiday, letting the phone ring hollowly in a forgotten coat pocket. 

"Scully," he says.

She could nearly collapse with relief. "Mulder." 

He pauses. "I was beginning to think you regretted the other night." 

If someone were tapping our conversations, she thinks, they would have a field day with that one. 

"I do," she says. "I mean, I did. What we did was, at best, irresponsible. But..." 

"But?"

"Listen, Mulder. Have you ever heard of a Dr. Alvin Kurtzveil?"

"Conspiracy nut, right?"

"Yes," she lets breath hiss through her teeth. "Mulder, my sister-in-law has one of his books, and it..."

"Don't be like me, Scully. You'll start seeing conspiracies in your breakfast cereal." 

"It's all right there, Mulder. The virus. The bees. The corn crops." 

"You think this Kurtzveil guy has insider information?" The teasing edge has left his voice.

"It seems too close to be a coincidence."

"If it's true, why would they ever let him publish?"

She twists her hands together, biting her lip. "Maybe it's easier that way. He discredits himself by reputation. If they silence him, someone might start looking into it." 

"Scully," he chuckles softly. "Was that a They with a capital t?"

"There's more," she says, her voice trembling. 

"What?" Serious once more.

"This Kurtzveil, he seems to think that when it happens, it will be on a holiday. People will be away from their homes, visiting family, in transit. There will be chaos. Panic in the streets. By the time anyone realizes what is happening, it will be too late." 

In the other room, a child begins to wail. 

She hears her sister-in-law begin to croon Matthew's name. Hears voices and a muffled commotion. 

"Scully?" Mulder's voice in her ear. 

"Came through the window--" 

"Matthew, honey, stop crying--"

"What's wrong--" 

"Matty?"

"Matty!"

"Oh god, Bill, his face--"

"--ambulance--" 

"Scully?" Mulder asks again.

"Mulder," she says, fear and desperation creeping in. 

"I'm on my way," he tells her, and the phone goes dead in her hand.

*

It is a grim tableau that greets her in the dining room. Matthew lies on the floor, his face slack, chubby hands balled into fists. Tara is sobbing over him, cradling his head. Bill paces back and forth, his face distorted in a mask of grief and fear she has never before seen.

"Out of the way," she demands, dropping to her knees, beginning to administer CPR. "What happened?" 

She sees a purpled swelling on her nephew's arm, fears she may already know the answer. 

"A bee," Tara says. "I... he... he has no allergy." 

Pump, pump, breathe. She works frantically, as though the desperate throb of her own heart might coax life back into the child's.

"It's busy," her mother sobs, clutching the telephone. "911 is busy. How can this be?"

She cannot recall a time when her mother's voice has sounded so panicked. So distraught. Tearful, yes. When her father passed away. When Missy... 

But this, this blind panic, this was something else. 

"Try again," she barks. 

There are small bumps appearing on her nephew's face. She tries to ignore them, tries to tell herself this is just an allergic reaction, just swelling, that if they can get a hold of the ambulance and get someone there in time it will all be okay.

"I hear sirens," Bill says, moving to the window. 

"It's still busy," Maggie sobs. 

"Go flag him down!" She continues to pump, continues to breathe air into still lungs. 

Bill goes. She can hear his feet thudding down the stairs. 

A moment later he is back, pale and shocky. He runs a hand through his thinning hair, leaving it standing up at strange angles. 

"They... it..."

There is a squeal outside, a thud, the shatter of glass. Screams. Dull pops in the distance.

"Is someone firing?" She lifts her head from the boy's face, strains to listen. 

The baby has begun to scream in her crib. 

"Matty, Matty, Matty," Tara begs. 

"Come on," she says fiercely, as though she can will him back from the brink by sheer force of will. 

It is no use. He is still and quiet in her arms. 

"The ambulance?" she says finally, lifting her head, shoulders slumping in defeat. 

Her mother, still cradling the useless telephone to her ear, sinks to the floor. 

Tara falls to her knees, pulling her son onto her lap, pressing kisses to his puffed and distorted face. Bill drops next to her, grasping, his face a blank mask of shock and grief. 

She stands, turns away, her hand pressed tightly to her mouth. She fears if she lets so much as a tear fall that it will turn into a floodgate she cannot control. She breathes in, a deep, shaky, unsteady breath. 

She presses her forehead against the cool glass of the window. Below, her mother's peaceful street has gone to ruin. A police car is bent in a u-shape around a telephone pole, smoke billowing from the hood. The officer is slumped half in and half out of the windshield, blood pooled under his head. 

There are no onlookers. No one there to assist. 

A man stumbles out of the apartment building across the street, his head half-covered by a jacket, arms flailing wildly at the air around him. 

He stumbles, falls, chin cracking against the pavement. In an instant, bees are on him. He twitches once, twice, and is still. 

She stands rooted to the spot and wonders if she is witnessing the end of the world. 

She sees a Volkswagen bus, appearing like a mirage through the haze of smoke and bees. It is moving fast, very fast, and as it squeals to a stop and the doors fly open she wants to scream no, wants to tell them to go back, get back, but it is too late. 

They move like a synchronized team of misfit superheroes, wielding cans of Raid and cigarette lighters. 

She meets them at the door, stepping aside as they rush in, and then she finds herself crushed into Mulder's arms. He smells of bug spray and something else, something sweet and familiar. 

"Are you all right?" He murmurs into her hair. 

No, she thinks. I'm not. 

"Yes," she says, knowing he is not inquiring about her mental health. "Mulder, my nephew--"

"Stung?" Frohike's voice startles her. He is standing mere inches away, all of them crowded in the foyer. She has, for only a moment, believed herself alone in Mulder's arms. 

"He's dead," she says flatly. Dead, like those she has surrounded herself with at work for the past seven years. 

"Get him on ice," Langly says. 

They are suddenly in motion, stampeding into her mother's living room. Bill and Tara look up, blinking, at the intrusion. 

"Start the tub," Mulder barks. 

Byers wrenches open the freezer, filling his arms with ice cube trays. 

Frohike drops to his knees, attempts to pick up Matthew, and is sent sprawling to the floor by a well placed punch. 

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Bill snarls. 

"We have to slow the process--" Langly says helplessly. 

"Dana?" Her mother is standing alone, hugging herself, looking lost and adrift in her grief and confusion. "Who are these men?"

She stands frozen for a moment, and then is all action. She gently pulls Matthew into her arms. "I trust them," she says.

She carries him into the small bathroom, where Mulder is already running cold water in the tub. "Quickly," he says. 

She lays him down, watching the water slosh over his still shoulders, soaking his little t-shirt, his jeans. Byers dumps the ice cubes, which hiss and pop as they hit the water. 

"What--" 

Mulder touches her arm, gently. "Cold slows it. That's all we know." 

Maggie has approached the doorway. "What can I do?"

"Make more ice," Frohike says, handing her the trays. "As much as you can." 

Maggie takes the trays, leaves wordlessly. 

"He's dead," she says.

"He's not, but he likely will be soon. The virus slows respiration so much as to be imperceptible, but doesn't kill the subject right away. It needs him alive to start the process." 

She blinks. "What process?"

The four men exchange glances, and she is once again conscious of how they have squeezed together in such a small space. Not much room for secrets. 

"You were right," Mulder tells her. "Smallpox is just a delivery vessel for something else. But it's not a virus, at least not in the traditional sense." 

"I called in a favor from a buddy of mine," Frohike says. "Used to work for the CDC. He had a look at the tissue samples from that monkey we took out of Roush." 

"Scully," Mulder says, his eyes locking hers, and she knows immediately that what she is about to hear will not make any damn sense at all. 

"What are you trying to say?"

"The virus is masking the creation of a new life form." 

"A new life form." She repeats this, feeling the words roll off her tongue. 

"An extraterrestrial life form." 

She does not have the strength to sigh. Instead she sits down on the ledge of the bathtub, letting her fingers trail through the cold water, gently stroke her nephew's puffy face, smooth back the wet tendrils of his hair. 

"There's a vaccine," he says, his voice dropped down low so that those outside the room cannot hear. 

She looks up, meets his gaze. "How can you know that?"

"The men who are responsible for this... they developed it. To save their own asses when the time came." 

She smiles sadly at him. It is so him, she thinks, to find one tiny spark of light in the darkness. An unlikely hook to hang all of his hopes on. 

He believes in the vaccine. He may even be right in surmising its existence. But there is no way in hell they will ever get close enough to procure it, and even if they could, to do so in time to save her nephew. 

He holds her gaze steadily. Does not speak.

What are her options? Sit here, numb with grief, waiting for the end? She thinks suddenly of Daniel, pictures him so vividly sitting in his wing-backed chair, the day's newspaper clutched in his hand, waiting with grim resolve for it to all be over. 

No, she thinks. It may be futile, but I'll go out fighting.

Mulder touches her face. It is a light touch. Questioning.

She nods. 

*

They go forth together.

The Gunmen have taken over the living room, spreading out their laptops and files. Tara holds vigil over her son while Bill boards up the air vents and windows with pieces of the dining room table. It is Maggie who has the most difficulty seeing them go, Maggie who clutches at her one surviving daughter and begs her to stay.

"If there's a chance," she says quietly. "I have to try." 

"Africanized honey bees," Mulder says as they reach the door. "Killer bees. They knew what they were doing when they made these plans. They chose bees most likely to swarm." 

"You know we aren't going to get very far, right?"

He glances down at her, his jaw working, and for a moment she thinks he will try to lighten the moment with a joke. 

Instead he kisses her. 

It is a hard kiss, rough, short but thorough. His hands tangle in her hair for just a moment and then he is gone. 

She is left shaken, flustered, stunned. 

"Mulder--" she says, and stops. There is nothing to say. 

He smiles at her, and in spite of the chaos around them, his smile is gentle. "Promise me that won't be the last one." 

He pushes open the door and steps out into the street. 

They make it to the car without too much trouble. Moving slowly, back to back, no rapid movements. 

Once inside, doors shut, she allows herself a shaky breath of relief.

He starts the car, pulls slowly out into the road. He does not speak as they pass by the mangled police car and its unmoving cargo. 

"This ride might get a little hairy," he mutters, turning a corner and braking hard to avoid a teenage boy sprinting across the street with a television set in his arms, bees clinging to the back of his jacket.

They snake through traffic, around broken glass and burning cars, through city streets that are suddenly empty save for the dead. 

"Where are we going?" She asks him as he pulls onto the highway, riding the shoulder to bypass stopped cars with panicked occupants.

He meets her eyes for a moment. "That Kurtzveil guy. He's got a house an hour outside the city." 

"You think he has access to a cure?"

He sighs. "He may know the people who do." 

It is getting dark. Thanksgiving is almost over. 

Black Friday, she thinks grimly, is going to have a whole new meaning by the time tomorrow is through. 

She turns to say something to him, sees his face cast in the dying light of day, and then the world explodes around them. 

There is glass in her hair and smoke in her eyes. She can hear a distant drone, a sound she struggles to identify until she realizes that it is the car horn.

She is on her side, held steady by her seatbelt. Her chest is sore, bruised. Her head has punched a hole through the window. 

Mulder.

She turns towards him, grimacing as shards of glass tinkle from her shoulders. There is something wet dripping down the side of her face. He is draped across the steering wheel, untroubled by its ceaseless blare.

She reaches out and touches him. He slumps sideways, and the noise stops. 

"Mulder," she groans. 

His eyes flutter, open for a moment, shut again. 

She can, just barely, through the creeping darkness, make out the twisted shape of another car. 

She hadn't even seen it coming. 

"Scully," Mulder says, and she turns towards him again. His eyes are open, and he is staring at her with wide-eyed alertness. 

"Someone hit us," she says unnecessarily, and begins struggling with the belt. 

"Don't," he says.

"I have to see if anyone else is hurt." 

"You're hurt." 

She hesitates, touching the side of her head. Her hand encounters something wet and slick and for a second the world spins sickeningly around her. She takes her hand away and her stomach settles. 

"I'm all right," she lies. "Head wounds bleed a lot." 

The buckle gives way, dumping her forward into the dashboard. She lets out an involuntary little groan. 

"This was stupid," Mulder says, his voice weak.

She shoves herself forward, towards the gap in the windshield. "I'd call for help, but I don't think anyone would come." 

"Bigger fish to fry," he agrees. There is blood dripping in his eyes. His strange, almost carefree alertness troubles her. She knows it is his system flooding with adrenaline, a last ditch effort to keep him going.

She hopes he can keep going long enough to get to safety. 

If anyplace is safe anymore.

She gives him one last look and pushes herself through the gap. The glass tugs at her clothes but does not tear. 

The night air is cold. Aside from the other wrecked car, they are alone on the road. She shudders to think what that might mean. 

She finds her footing, limps towards the other vehicle. As she approaches the driver's side, she sees exactly what caused it to careen out of control.

"My god," she murmurs. 

The driver has been infected. He is dead, slumped back in his seat, his chin resting on his chest. His skin is a mottled, jellied, translucent gray. 

There is a gaping, bloody cavern where his guts should be. 

Even as she scans the dashboard for some offending object that could have caused such trauma, her brain urges her to take a better look.

That wound was caused by something ejecting from the body, not piercing it. 

Blind panic seizes her. She whirls away from the car, drags herself back to Mulder. 

He is still behind the wheel, looking around serenely. His eyes have gone glassy. 

She fears what injuries are hidden behind the bulk of the steering column. 

"Mulder," she says. She wrenches at the door, hearing metal grind against metal. "We have to go." 

"I don't think I can do that," he says. He is smiling. It is a gentle, confused smile. 

"I'm a doctor. I can take care of you." 

He shakes his head slowly. "I'm not in your domain. Yet." 

"You're not going to die." She is unsure whether she means to convince him or herself. 

"It was too little, too late," he sighs. "I've gotten soft. Rusty. If this had happened years ago, I might have been able to..." 

"Don't say that," she says, reaching out to gently touch his face. "Look at what we managed to find out in such a short time. We almost stopped it." 

"Imagine if we'd had years." His voice is not accusing. It is wistful. 

"I'm sorry I walked out on you," she says. Her voice is stronger than she expects. "I've spent these past months thinking I was having some sort of... marital crisis. What I've really been doing is waking up." 

"I'm still glad I saw you in that theater." 

She laughs. It is a tearful, choked sound. "I was so stupid, Mulder. Even after I left, all I did was try to recreate the life I'd left behind. I chose autopsies over saving lives. I wanted something to investigate, something to solve. I kept telling myself it wasn't the same, but--"

"Shh," he says. He is still smiling. She is afraid of what that smile means.

"We've made a mess of ourselves," she tells him, sagging against the warped driver's side door. 

His eyes shut briefly, and then open again and fix on her face. His breathing is labored.

_I could have loved him,_ she thinks. They have forged such a connection in such a short time. It is not, as she originally believed, purely based on nostalgia. 

Now they will never know. 

Something hisses in the darkness. A chill creeps down her spine. 

"Mulder." Urgent, now. "Mulder, please. We can't stay here." 

"You go," he says.

Everything in her balks at this. "No." 

"I'm not going anywhere, Scully. But you can make it." 

A hiss, and a scratch of something sharp on concrete. Closer, now.

"No," she says. "I can't." 

His eyes struggle to stay open, to stay fixed on her face.

"Mulder." The tears are flowing now. "Mulder, you made me promise that wouldn't be the last one." 

"What you said, before," his voice seems to come with much effort. "About waking up. I didn't realize at the time." 

She gives another futile tug on the door. 

"When you stopped by my hospital room," he says. "You woke me up. You saved my life. And even if it was all heading to this moment, I'm... I'm glad we did something. I'm glad we tried." 

She shuts her eyes. Smiles. "I am too." 

When she opens her eyes again, he is gone. 

She stands for a moment, trembling, looking at his still face. 

There is something behind her. Something rattling and hissing in the dead of night. 

She turns-- slower than she would like, her balance still off-center. They regard each other for a moment, woman and monster. 

It is humanoid, with big black eyes like in countless renderings. But there is none of the calm eeriness she associates with little green men. 

_Gray,_ her mind corrects automatically. _Little_ gray _men._

This thing is feral, wild. It drools and trembles with fear and hunger and rage. 

Her hand twitches, a ghost of her former life, for a gun that isn't at her hip. 

It squeals, launches itself forward. Its claws sink home. 

*

She wakes in a hospital bed, flailing violently. An IV needle jerks out of her arm, tearing her skin. 

Someone is saying "no no no no" and with a jolt of disorientation she realizes it is her own voice. 

How can this be, she thinks. How can I be alive now, without him?

"Scully." 

His voice. His hands, grasping her arms, stilling her. 

She blinks, says his name. His face is unmarred. He is whole, undamaged. 

"You're all right," he says. "You're all right. I should get the doctor. I should--" 

Her hand snakes out from under the thin sheet, grabs his wrist. She is suddenly greeted with a vivid image of this same action, only in the warm sleepy darkness of his apartment. She halted him then, and she halts him now. 

"I..." 

He is dead behind the wheel. He is alive in front of her. And the hospital-- it is quiet, sterile, ordinary. There is nothing apocalyptic about this location. No moans and groans of the dying and damned. 

"The bees," she says, and then groans and touches her head as vertigo washes over. 

"No bees," he replies, giving her a small, worried smile. "Just you, stepping in front of a desperate kid with a knife." 

She recalls, now. In scenes, not moments. 

"Christmas," she says. Her throat is dry. 

He nods. "Christmas Eve. The tip of the blade broke off in your lung. They almost didn't catch it. You've been in a coma." 

She looks around wildly. The room offers no hints of time or place.

"A week," he says, and then lets a breath hiss out from between his teeth.

She looks down at her hands. They are bare. No ring. 

"Dreaming," she murmurs, and then she laughs. 

"It's New Year's Eve," he tells her, sitting gently on the edge of the bed. His fingers are gently stroking the side of her face. 

She wants to grab him, to pull him to her and hold him tightly.

"I should get the doctor," he says again. 

She shakes her head. "Not yet." 

He nods, scoots closer. 

"What time is it?"

He smiles. "Almost midnight. This will be the second year we greet from a hospital." 

Their eyes lock. She tries to banish the image of his face with all the light and mischief gone out of it. 

"Hey," he says softly, reaching out to wipe away the tears that have surfaced, unbidden. 

She leans up, catches his lips with hers. He is gentle, tender. 

When they pull apart, she sees that his eyes are damp as well. "I thought..." 

"Shh," she says. "I know." 

He squeezes her hand, stands. When he reaches the door, he pauses and smiles back at her. It is a sunny, genuine smile. Years lift from him with that smile. 

*

Her mother and brother arrive together within the hour. The relief she feels at seeing their faces is powerful, visceral, like a punch in the gut. She holds her brother tightly and thinks about him standing, pale and shocky, in her mother's dining room, cradling the body of his dead son.

"Tara stayed back with the kids," he tells her. "Matthew wanted to stay up until midnight but passed out around nine." 

Her mother, so strong and resilient. Smiling at her in her worried way. 

Mulder keeps watch from the doorway. 

*

Four days later he escorts her carefully to his car. She holds her coat closed against the bitter winter air.

There is a group of young teenage boys standing in the snow-crusted hospital courtyard. They wear heavy coats and hats, and their breath puffs out from smiling mouths. They kick and frolic in the snow, tossing snowballs with good-natured zeal. And every so often, one breaks off from the group; enters the hospital with self-confident, assured strides. 

The sight moves her, although she is at a loss to remember why.

*

"There have been studies," Mulder tells her, over a steaming mug of tea. "Where comatose patients report out of body experiences. In at least one case, a woman was able to describe items that were placed well above her line of sight. Said she saw them when she floated up, out of her own body, and looked down at her hospital room." 

"Mulder, I was still very much in my own body." 

"A dream," he says, gently. "A very vivid dream. You didn't go anywhere. I was by your side the entire time." 

"I wish I could remember more," she says, frustration seeping in. "I only have bits and pieces." 

"Are you sure you want to?" He looks at her cautiously. "You were distraught when you woke up. Screaming. Flailing. You had tears streaming down your face." 

_You were dead,_ she thinks. _You were dead, and I thought I was joining you._

*

"Kurtzveil," she says. 

He starts from sleep, rolling over to face her. His warm breath puffs on her cheek. 

"Alvin Kurtzveil?" 

"He wrote books, right?" 

"Yeah. Apocalyptic fiction." 

She struggles to remember. It is like looking at pictures through dirty glass. 

"Did he ever write a book called 'The Coming Swarm'?" 

Mulder laughs, and presses a kiss to her cheek. "That's some title." 

"Mulder." 

"No," he says. "Not as far as I know." 

She is silent for a moment, then sits up, heart jack hammering. "Because he's dead." 

"What?"

"He never wrote it because he's dead." 

"That would put a damper on his career, yeah." 

"He wasn't dead then. Because he had never met you. Because they never saw fit to eliminate him." 

He is silent for a long while, his fingers absently stroking her arm. "Do you really believe that?"

She sniffs, buries her face in the pillow. "Mulder, I don't know what to believe. It was so real." 

"What do you want to do?"

*

They drive. 

It is dark, snowy. She is chilled to the bone, even wrapped in her coat with the heat blasting. 

He shoots furtive, worried little looks in her direction. 

The warehouse is where she remembers it. Just a sad, empty building in a decrepit industrial park. Half-covered bits of trash poke up from beneath filthy snow. 

She gets out of the car, snow filling her boots. 

"Scully," he says.

She pushes through the door, steps into the cold, empty room. Her heels click on concrete. 

It is dusty. Unused. Derelict. 

There are broken, filmy windows along the back wall. 

He steps up behind her, wraps his arms around her. She leans back into him with a small sigh of relief, accepting the comfort. 

"It's just a warehouse," he says.

"Yes," she agrees. "Just a warehouse." 

She shines a flashlight into the corner, just in case. There is no rat, no limp tail of a forsaken escapee. 

Because of us, she thinks, but does not say. 

Instead, she lets him lead her back to the car, his strong, warm hand clasped around her small, cool one. 

The car is still warm. They sit for a moment, shaking off the chill of the outside world. 

When he looks over at her, she meets his gaze and smiles. He leans over, touches his lips to hers. 

"Home?" he asks. 

"Yes," she says. "I am."

**Author's Note:**

> The song referenced in the first paragraph of Chapter 1 is Don Henley's "New York Minute." 
> 
> This story contains major character death. As this happens in a dream/hallucination and not in the "real" universe, I have not tagged it as such. However, as the bulk of this story does take place inside Scully's head, please be aware if this is something you find upsetting. There are also references to the alien virus, and the beginnings of colonization. I do not believe the virus descriptions are any more gruesome than what was given to us in the show/movie, but your mileage may vary.


End file.
